Edgar Rice Burroughs famous quotes

When Tarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled, and smiles are the foundation of beauty.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Foundation

Am I alive and a reality, or am I but a dream?
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Dream #Reality #Alive

I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Writing #Successful #Interesting

The more one listens to ordinary conversations the more apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take little part in the direction of the vocal organs.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Brain #Ordinary #Littles

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Eye #Moon #Feet

If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Writing #Odds #Stories

I love you, and because I love you I believe in you. But if I did not believe, still should I love. Had you come back for me, and had there been no other way, I would have gone into the jungle with you - forever.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Believe #Love You #Forever

I have discovered that the world over, unusual weather prevails at all times of the year.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Years #Weather #World

I shall have to believe even though I cannot understand.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Believe

If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Dull #Judgment

Clothes therefore, must be the insignia of the superiority of man over all other animals, for surely there could be no other reason for wearing the hideous things
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Animal #Men #Clothes

We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Fall #Long #Way

I write to escape ... to escape poverty.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Writing #Poverty

I do not think that I am ever overconfident. I am merely wholly confident, and I maintain that there is all the difference in the world there.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Thinking #Differences #World

Death, only, renders hope futile.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Instant

A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Heart #Warrior #May

Golf is a mental disorder.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Golf #Disorder #Mental Disorder

The whole fabric of our religion is based on superstitious beliefin lies that have been foisted upon us for ages by those directly above us, to whose personal profit and aggrandizement it was to have us continue to believe as they wished us to believe.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Atheist #Lying #Believe

I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Adventure #Men #Enough

For me, temperance is essential to good work.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Essentials #Moderation #Good Work

Love is a strange master, and human nature is still stranger.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Love #Strange #Human Nature

Even brave men, and D'Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Men #Brave #Solitude

I could write stories just as rotten.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Writing #Stories #Rotten

It never seems to occur to some people, that, like beauty, a sense of humor may sometimes be fatal.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#People #May #Sense Of Humor

They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Imagination #Invisible #Intangible

I am Tarzan of the Apes. I want you. I am yours. You are mine. We live here together always in my house. I will bring you the best of fruits, the tenderest deer, the finest meats that roam the jungle. I will hunt for you. I am the greatest of the jungle fighters. I will fight for you. I am the mightiest of the jungle fighters. You are Jane Porter, I saw it in your letter. When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Love You #Fighting #House

I loved her. I still love her, though I curse her in my sleep, so nearly one are love and hate, the two most powerful and devasting emotions that control man, nations, life.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Powerful #Hate #Sleep

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Names #Imagination

I got this story from someone who had no business in the telling of it.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Stories #Framing

Beast?" Jane murmured. "Then God make me a beast; for, man or beast, I am yours.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Men #Beast

It must be that I am dreaming, and that I shall awaken in a moment to see that awful knife descending toward my heart- kiss me, dear, just once before I lose my dream forever." -Jane-
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Dream #Heart #Kissing

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Reading #People #Fiction

Traveling through space is stupifyingly monotonous.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Space #Monotonous

For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Lions #Assuming #Caught

The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in a manner of virtue
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Virtue #Crime #Mayhem

It is a characteristic of the weak and criminal to attribute to others the misfortunes that are the result of their own wickedness.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Criminals #Wickedness #Weak

I knew nothing about the technique of story writing, and now, after eighteen years of writing, I still know nothing about the technique, although with the publication of my new novel, "Tarzan and the Lost Empire", there are 31 books on my list.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Book #Writing #Years

Yes, I was a fool, but I was in love, and though I was suffering the greatest misery I had ever known I would not have had it otherwise for all the riches of Barsoom. Such is love, and such are lovers wherever love is known.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Love Is #Suffering #Riches

In that little party there was not one who would desert another; yet we were of different countries, different colours, different races, different religions--and one of us was of a different world.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Country #Party #Race

In one respect at least the Martians are a happy people, they have no lawyers.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#People #Lawyer #Happy People

exsistance is not the cure it is the problem
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Problem #Cures

I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Believe #Hero #Alternatives

Fortunate indeed are those in which there is combined a little good and a little bad, a little knowledge of many things outside their own callings, a capacity for love and a capacity for hate, for such as these can look with tolerance upon all, unbiased by the egotism of him whose head is so heavy on one side that all his brains run to that point.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Running #Hate #Tolerance

The jungle which is presided over by Kudu, the sun, is a very different jungle from that of Goro, the moon. The diurnal jungle has its own aspect--its own lights and shades, its own birds, its own blooms, its own beasts ... The lights and shades of the nocturnal jungle are as different as one might imagine the lights and shades of another world to differ from those of our world.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Moon #Light #Our World

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Children #Men #Desire

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Vintage #Seductive #Balance

I presume that it is the better part of wisdom that we bow to our fate with as good grace as possible.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Fate #Grace #Bows

Subconscious minds are no less fallible than the objective mind.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Mind #Statistics #Subconscious

Even theories must have foundations.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Foundation #Statistics #Theory

Could it be that there were other things more desirable than cold logic and undefiled brain power?
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Brain #Statistics #Logic

So strong is the power of superstition that even though we know that we have been reverencing a sham, yet still we hesitate to admit the validity of our new-found convictions.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Strong #Statistics #Superstitions

For a time Jack was angry; but when he had been without the jacket for a short while he began to realize that being half-clothed is infinitely more uncomfortable than being entirely naked. Soon he did not miss his clothing in the least, and from that he came to revel in the freedom of his unhampered state.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Missing #Half #Naked

This was life! Ah, how he loved it! Civilization held nothing like this in its narrow and circumscribed sphere, hemmed in by restrictions and conventionalities. Even clothes were a hindrance and a nuisance. At last he was free. He had not realized what a prisoner he had been.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Civilization #Clothes #Lasts

Anger and hate against one we love steels our hearts, but contempt or pity leaves us silent and ashamed.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Hate #Heart #Steel

I verily believe that a man's way with women is in inverse ratio to his prowess among men. The weakling and the saphead have often great ability to charm the fair sex, while the fighting man who can face a thousand real dangers unafraid, sits hiding in the shadows like some frightened child.
-- Edgar Rice Burroughs

#Sex #Children #Real